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[February 2007] The second “Financial Management for Line Managers in Engineering” Seminar, in what is intended to be one of a series of such Seminars, was successfully held and attracted some 43 people from a wide range of industries and from both large blue chip companies and smaller companies. The target audience was ambitious young engineers aiming to take on additional responsibilities and often requiring an improved knowledge of business and commercial practice. For some who may have received a basic grounding in finance as part of their engineering degree course, this knowledge may in the interim have become somewhat obsolete; and for others, they may have received no financial training at all.
The option is not always available for young engineers to undertake either a full-time or a part-time MBA course or similar. The objective of running the
seminar on the fundamentals of finance in an engineering context was to
provide a source of such information not otherwise readily available to such people. A concentrated one-day course of instruction on the basics of
financial management was designed specifically for these young engineers either in or about to take up their first line management position.
Under the Chairmanship of Christopher Simpson, the programme was divided into three sections, each with a highly knowledgeable and experienced presenter.
Keith Parker from the Cranfield School of Management read PPE at Oxford
and subsequently qualified as a Chartered Accountant at Coopers, and was then employed in senior financial positions in industry before taking up his present position. He is writing a book entitled “Accounting and Financial Analysis”. He gave an inspirational introduction to the Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Cash Flow and then moved on to demonstrate how to examine company accounts and assess performance.
Tim Podesta is a member of the Board of the Management Group. He is a
Chartered Engineer and has an MBA from Warwick Business School. He has held senior positions at BP, where he has been for 25 years, and is currently Commercial Manager at BP International and is responsible for planning and financial performance. With the benefit of substantial experience working on major projects, he provided a tutorial on practical investment analysis introducing the concepts of discounted cash flow and net value.
Keith Lowen, is a Fellow of the Certified and Corporate Accountants and is
Chief Financial Officer of the highly successful Magal Group of companies,
which has been successful in winning a number of Manufacturing Excellence Awards including one for Financial Management. The Magal financial management controls are exemplary and illustrate the value of not only relevant information, but information provided at the earliest opportunity thus allowing prompt and effective decision making. He described in detail the methodology and benefits of zero based budgets.
In a subsequent survey, 96% of the delegates described the technical content as good or excellent and 92% made a similar assessment of the presentation skills. One attendee commented after the seminar, “as one of the speakers, being able to share one's experience to such an audience was very enjoyable and rewarding. I will certainly be looking for further opportunities to do the same in the future and would encourage others with a passion for a managerial subject to do the same”.
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